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Fusion Science and Technology
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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Nolan E. Hertel, R. H. Johnsons, Bernard W. Wehring, John J. Dorning
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 2 | March 1986 | Pages 345-361
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24721
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral experiments have been performed using a homogeneous iron spherical shell to test neutron cross-section data. Neutron leakage spectra from the shell were measured using 252Cf-fission and (deuterium-tritium) D-T-fusion neutron sources and an NE-213 spectrometry system. An associated particle detector was used to monitor the absolute D-T neutron source strength as well as any accompanying deuterium-deuterium neutron contamination. The leakage spectra were calculated using the continuous-energy Monte Carlo code VIM and the discrete ordinates Sn code ANISN employing ENDF/B-IV. For neutron energies between 1 and 5 MeV, the calculations underpredicted the leakage spectrum by factors of 1.4 to 2 for the californium neutron source and of 2 to 3 for the D-T neutron source. The large discrepancies are attributed to inadequate representation of cross-section resonance structure (namely, minima); inadequate representation of the angular and secondary energy distributions for continuum inelastic scattering and (n,2n) reactions also contribute to these discrepancies.
